There is one type of training feedback, used particularly in practical skills, that really gets my back up.
For example, decades ago in sailing class:
Now, do you think you did everything correctly?
……… …………. ? …………… .
…….. ? …………… ….. .
……… ………. ? ……….
et cetera et cetera
What I would have preferred:
Mops you utter idiot! You just stood tall for a moment. If you’d had crash gybed you’d have a crushed skull now and gone overboard. Imagine your lying in the drink now, dead and sinking down.
I wonder if the “guessing game” method is widely considered a good or a bad practice by really good trainers, and particularly by people who train trainers.
I remember professors who would use that method back when I was in medical school. I hated it. Not so much because of how they would react if I correctly guessed what my mistake was, but because of the way they would react to the converse.
Let’s say some task involves getting A, B, C, D, and E done. Let’s say I did A, B, c, D, and E. The question would come, “what did you do wrong?” If I actually said c, things would be fine, and the lesson would proceed. If, however, I said B, or D, or whatever part of it I did correctly, the response I would typically get would be something like “why would you think you messed that up?, do you know that little that you think something you got right might actually be wrong?, you must not have studied at all”, or something along those lines.
I’m confused. What are we talking about here? Is the idea that instead of saying “you got question 4 wrong. You said A the answer is B”. You say “which question did you get wrong, do you think?”.
I’ve never encountered that. Sounds like it would just waste everyone’s time.
Hmm. As a teacher, I often do something like this:
Student: I got my answer, it’s 17!
Me: How’d you get that?
Student: Here’s my work!
Me: Did you check each step for accuracy?
Student: Uh, no…
Me: Check each step, and let me know what you find.
Crucially, I ask the second question (How’d you get that?) whether or not the answer is 17.
It’s super annoying to some students. But what I want–and I tell this to them explicitly–is for them to build the habit of reviewing their work even when I’m not there. If I only tell them to check their work when the answer is wrong, the stimulus for checking the work becomes “someone tells me I made a mistake,” not, “I solved the problem.” Which means that they won’t check their work independently.
It only works if students have techniques for reflection and work-checking. These techniques need to be taught explicitly, and students need to be supported in building the skills. But a person can’t master a skill unless they’re able to reflect on their practice.
As above, the ability to evaluate one’s own work independently of confirmation of correctness is important.
I see this often when training people. We often get results that are not incorrect but “not incorrect” can cover a lot of ground - including optimal results or good enough or ‘eh, not great but we need to move on’.
The most valuable folks are those who review their own work and not only when there is an explicit error. It often leads to some reflection and taking a new tack or improving their existing results. The worst are the ones who were primarily educated on standardized tests where an answer is either correct or incorrect. It is difficult to break a couple decades of the habit of thinking they are done as long as they aren’t incorrect.
This reminds me of a story, probably apocryphal, about Henry Kissinger. Kissinger assigned one of his staff members to write a speech. The guy writes the speech and puts it in Kissinger’s inbox.
A while later Kissinger calls him in and says, “Is this the best you can do?” The guy thinks for a minute and says, “I could probably improve it.” So Kissinger hands him the paper and he walks out.
Later he puts the rewrite in Kissinger’s inbox, and then Kissinger calls him in and asks, “Is this the best you can do?” The guy thinks for a minute, takes the paper and leaves.
Finally he puts the next version in Kissinger’s inbox, and Kissinger calls him in and asks, “Is this the very best you can do?” And the guy says, “Yes this is my best work.” Kissinger says, “Good. In that case, I’ll read it.”
IMHO this illustrates the problem with the approach. It could very well be that the first or second draft were actually better, and that they made it worse by revising something that was already optimal.
Certainly it’s possible, and no method is perfect.
But generally I’ve found it does lead to improved results. No secret - nobody likes doing extra and unnecessary work. But once it becomes clear that maybe that ‘extra’ work is not really so unnecessary, people generally put more time and effort into it.
This seems to presume we’re discussing someone who is mostly already trained, and would recognize an error when they see it and be able to figure out what they did wrong based on the details of that specific error. In that setting, the method probably has some merits. Something like a journeyman who knows the routine and the reasons things are done a certain way, maybe made a simple mistake / got sloppy, and is being asked by the master to review their process on that particular task.
In the setting of someone who is still in their initial training, however, I think this method is a lot less useful. It isn’t about that trainee not putting in extra work. It’s about that trainee still not having the skills and knowledge to be able to look at the situation and determine where their mistake was, not matter how much effort they put in to solving the problem.
ETA: To put in terms of the medical field, which I’m most familiar with, it would probably be a good technique for an attending to use when teaching a 4th year resident. It would be a lot less useful when teaching a 1st year medical student.
To be fair, the Kissinger story took place when one had to write or type every new draft from scratch - very different from the edit-as-you-write approach made possible by word processing software.
Absolutely. If I haven’t taught someone how to do something, it’d be absurd for me to ask them to evaluate their untrained work. When working with kids, it’s still ineffective if I’ve taught them that work but haven’t taught the skills specific to self-reflection and assessment. I can’t imagine an effective educator who uses this approach with folks who don’t know the skills involved.
Look at the OP: Mops stood up on a sailboat instead of crouching and thereby endangered his life. Either the instructor had already said, “Don’t stand up on a sailboat in motion, you’ll risk getting your skull crushed,” or the instructor hadn’t.
If the instructor had given that instruction already, then asking, “Did you do everything right?” is a great idea: it forces contemplation and lets the student evaluate their work. That’s a very useful process.
If the instructor had never given that instruction, and expected Mops to derive it from first principles, I think the instructor’s a dumbass.
Similarly, when I finish a problem with my class, I always try to discuss why I think the answer makes sense: “Well, that side’s the hypotenuse, so it should be longer than either of the other sides, so that checks out. And it’s also shorter than the sum of the other two sides, so that checks out, too.” You won’t catch every mistake with sanity checks like that, but you’ll catch a lot of them.